


Elementals

by Alyndra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel is a wind spirit, Coming of Age, Dean Winchester is a fire spirit, Evil Lucifer (Supernatural), Fire Magic, Gen, Jack Kline is a water spirit, Minor Character Death, Reincarnation, Sam Winchester is a wood spirit, Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Challenge 2019, Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), Walks In The Woods, Water Spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-12 17:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21480304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyndra/pseuds/Alyndra
Summary: Jack's an ordinary teenager until he meets three strange beings in the woods. Air, fire, earth...but they're missing their fourth, and Jack will never be the same if he listens to who they think he should become.
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20
Collections: 2019 Supernatural Reversebang Challenge





	Elementals

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Artwork for the story Elementals written by Alyndra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21467677) by [TheGreenestGreenToEverGreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreenestGreenToEverGreen/pseuds/TheGreenestGreenToEverGreen). 

> MidnightSilver is amazing and a joy to work with, and you can reblog her art [here!](https://midnightsilver.tumblr.com/post/189150350775/this-was-my-first-time-entering-the-spn-reverse)
> 
> Wetsammy and Monicawoe were wonderful enough to beta for me with my last-minute ways, and I can't thank them enough! And finally, thank you to Beelikej for modding the SPN Reversebang for us all once again! ♥ ♥ ♥

Jack’s mother moved them out of the city to the country with everything she had left, financially and physically. She put the tiny farmhouse in Jack’s name, even though he was only seventeen, and made her medical team set her up to stay at home. "Jack’s used to taking care of me," she said firmly, despite how frail she looked. "We’ll manage."

It was true; she’d been ill his whole life. She’d never really recovered from childbirth, but she always laughed and kissed him when he got sad about it. "I’d rather have you a million times over than not," she told him. "You’re my reason for living."

She died on his eighteenth birthday, and then it was just Jack. Technically an adult, he guessed but the only person he wanted to celebrate it with was just gone. He had everything he _needed_ to eat, sleep, look like a functional member of the community, but he didn't have anything he _wanted._

There was a huge nature preserve on three sides of the little farmhouse, and after she was buried, he started walking through the trees, with no real idea where he was going, but knowing he couldn’t keep standing still. Plants grew bright green everywhere and wildflowers bloomed riotously wherever he looked, even though the snow hadn’t been gone very long. The trees were budding enthusiastically, and the wind rustled through their branches above his head.

"Why here?" he’d asked his mother once, upset about switching schools for his senior year.

"The wind told me," she said. "Whispered to me right through the city streets, that we needed to get out and go somewhere really alive."

He’d come to like it here after all, more than he thought he would. The new school was smaller and friendlier, when he wanted friendliness, which wasn't often. But most of all, there was something about the woods that he loved deeply, like a shocking dose of heavy chocolate in his mouth.

He could almost pretend that the wind was whispering to him now: "Jack, Jack. Welcome, welcome." He wished it could really be saying that; it echoed like a refrain in his head.

He kept walking, letting his mind drift. The wind danced around him, and the plants all seemed to move in it, practically waving at him. When he came to a little rivulet of a stream, it seemed oddly quiet by comparison. It didn’t grow or bloom or flutter, just trickled quietly and unchangingly down its course.

Jack watched it for a time, oddly soothed. It was just water, it wasn’t trying to be anything it wasn’t. He wondered what he’d find if he followed it: a pool, a bigger stream, a lake? Finding out if there was more water further on seemed much more appealing than going back to his house and finding out there was no one there. He knew that without having to rediscover it every time he opened the door.

He sighed. There wasn’t much of the day left, and he’d walked a long way; if he didn’t want to be wandering in the dark, he’d better turn around, whether he felt like it or not. 

But as soon as he turned his face towards home, a little breeze _puffed_ at him, and he heard, just clear enough he couldn’t pretend he was imagining it, "Don’t go, Jack. Jack, come to us."

His brow furrowed. "Who said that?" he called. It couldn’t be, no way…

"I am the wind," the voice said. "The wind that called your mother to come here."

Jack turned and booked it. This was how people died in horror movies. The wind sighed alongside him, but didn’t say anything else, or if it did he couldn’t hear it over his pounding heart and panting breaths. He leapt over some brush, trying to figure out which way he'd come, but nothing looked familiar, and after a few minutes he was forced to slow down to try and figure out which way would actually take him back home, or at least out of the woods. If this was a horror movie, he was already screwed.

The wind didn’t feel malicious. It felt like the touch of a friend. "Why?" he asked it, shaking. "Why call my mother here, why are you calling me?"

"You have a place here, Jack," the voice said. A flower nodded against his leg, the grass and moss soft underneath him. "Let us welcome you."

Jack took a deep breath. "Okay," he said cautiously. "Who are you?" 

"I am Castiel. I am a spirit of the air, one of four ancient immortal beings," the voice said, and shimmered into view, a translucent blue figure standing before Jack. He was shaped like a person, but…his explanation only gave Jack more questions. How could Jack trust him? And why was it so difficult to _not_ trust him?

"Why are you naked?" Jack asked. The air spirit had designs—painted? Inked? _Imagined into being?_—running delicately but methodically all over his body, but wore nothing else.

The wind sighed again. "Clothing is an inconvenience, but if nudity bothers you I will adjust." The figure of Castiel was suddenly wearing a pale trenchcoat. "Is this better?"

It was too obvious that he wasn’t wearing anything _under_ the trenchcoat. "Now you just look like a flasher," Jack informed him.

Castiel looked down at the patterns decorating his hands and legs where they stuck out from the long coat and sighed as though Jack was really asking a lot. 

A bright, dazzling orange light exploded up from a dead stump. "Did somebody call me?" a new voice asked.

Jack yelped and stumbled backwards, trying both to shade his eyes and to not take them off either potential threat. "Nobody called you! I didn’t call you!"

As fast as the fireball bloomed outwards, it resolved back into another human-shaped figure, this one all the orange and yellow shades of fire. There were straight lines and starburst patterns all over him, like the curlicues and loops that adorned the air spirit, and he had made no concessions to clothing for Jack’s sake. "I like flashing things," he grinned, winking at Jack.

""Let me guess, you’re a spirit of fire," Jack said, a little wildly, "And you’re going to huff, and puff, and burn my house down if I try to go back there…"

"Not unless you really piss me off, kid," the fire spirit said. "Name’s Dean. You really took your time coming out this far, didn’t you?"

"I—I _what_?" Jack asked. "I didn’t know I was _supposed_ to…"

"Go easy on him, Dean," Castiel said. "He was very focused on helping his mother, so I didn’t push."

Dean grunted in a way that sounded like a log cracking, but he seemed to accept this. 

But that brought up something else to Jack. "If you called my mother here, and you have magic, _why didn’t you help her?_"

Castiel sighed. "Healing magic is water magic, and we are weaker when there are only three of us. When we are four, there is little we cannot accomplish together, but…"

"Since Crowley died, most of our energy goes to just keeping our balance, and keeping our enemies from finding us," a new, quiet voice said behind Jack. 

Jack whirled, trying to see this third entity while keeping his eyes on the first two. "Who—where did you come from?" he demanded, fed up with people popping out of nowhere at him. 

"I’ve been here the whole time, Jack," the green man said with a wry grin. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a tree trunk, all mossy green with antlers crowning him. 

And he was also naked. Of course. "I’m Sam," he said gravely, holding a hand out to shake. He was much taller than Jack, especially with the antlers, but his eyes were kind, and Jack found himself taking the hand automatically. 

"You’ve been making the flowers bloom," he blurted, and Sam smiled in acknowledgment. "Were you all following me today? How long have you been doing the creepy stalker thing?"

"Nah, not my shtick," Dean drawled. "I’m either here or not, I don’t lurk."

"You’re about as subtle as a kick to the face, you mean," Sam grinned. 

"And yet somehow, I still manage to get one over on you regularly," Dean shot back, fake-thoughtful. 

"I’m sorry for my brother," Sam sighed, turning back to Jack. "Cas has watched you the longest. I’m pretty rooted to this forest, so when you started walking here this morning was the first time I got to be around you."

"Brother?" Jack asked. His questions were breeding like rabbits in his head. Yesterday he’d had no idea that magic was real, that ancient myths and legends like these—elemental spirits, or whatever—could present themselves right in front of his eyes and start talking. Sure, there were some cults and things that worshipped different gods and spirits, but people had all sorts of religions and most of them seemed mutually contradictory.

"Dean and I - our previous incarnations - died at the same time, and then we reincarnated together, or near enough," Sam explained. "As humans, not long ago we were born of the same parents."

"That must be weird," Jack said. "Dying and reincarnating."

"Yeah, well," Dean said. "Get used to the idea, kid."

Castiel frowned. "It is tiresome, is what it is," he said. "I wish you would stop, all of you." He glared around—not just at Dean and Sam, but at Jack, too. 

Jack felt alarmed as a giant puzzle piece fell into place with an almost audible _thonk._ "Are you saying...you guys think _I’m_..." No, he couldn’t say it, it was too crazy. "Where’s your fourth, where’s your water spirit?"

"His name was Crowley," Sam began, giving Jack a wild momentary sense of relief. And then snatching it away again. "He died just over eighteen years ago, Jack."

How dare he sound so...gentle. "I don’t believe this," Jack said wildly. "I was just on my way home, I don’t know you, I don’t know any of you or what you want with me…"

"You do know, Jack," Castiel said, kindly but firmly. "You just need help to remember."

"Going home now won’t help you," Dean said. "You’d just drive yourself crazy listening for us all the time. And you can’t outrun the wind, anyway. Or us, now that we’ve met you."

"Way to sound like a threatening stalker douchebag, douchebag," Jack said half-hysterically. "I guess if the shoe fits…"

Dean’s orange skin got brighter and turned light yellow in places, and flames grew out of his hair and ran along his shoulders. 

"Calm down, Dean," Sam said. "Do you remember when Cas first tried to tell _you_ about this?"

"He shot me," Cas informed Jack drily. "With a gun."

Sam had put his hand on Jack’s shoulder and he was very obviously doing _something,_ because Jack could feel all his hysteria draining right out of him, flowing away. It was like being grounded. Ha very hah. "I take it the gun didn’t kill you?"

"No. My flesh is not subject to the laws of solid matter unless I wish it," Cas explained, "only to gaseous matter."

"He can be killed, as all of us can, but not by conventional means," said Sam, who Jack was beginning to suspect just liked explaining things. 

Well, Jack needed all the explanations right now. "What, so you can compress and expand?"

"Yes," said Cas. "You will be able to reshape your own form at will, once you have rediscovered your powers, but not to grow bigger or smaller."

"Crowley hated that," Dean grinned. "He was always small."

"And what if I don’t want to ‘rediscover my powers?’" Jack asked, trying not to sound too sarcastic. There was a flutter in his stomach—who wouldn’t want to be offered magic powers? Never feel lonely or bullied or lose someone you loved again—but he didn’t know these people. How was he supposed to know if they were telling him the truth? Blind trust?

"We’ve got all the time in the world," Sam said. "But it won’t take that long, will it, Jack? You’re already curious. You want to _know._"

Jack took a deep breath. He looked from Sam, patient and warm, to Dean, burning merrily away and trying to pretend, badly, that he didn’t care, and Cas, whose ancient eyes held his steadily. "What do you want me to do?"

* * *

There was a ritual. Because of course something like this would involve naked chanting in the woods, or whatever. Well—the nudity and the woods parts were already covered, more or less. 

Which left just chanting. Jack hoped nervously it was going to be nothing but chanting. But irritatingly, they wouldn’t tell him much of anything. 

"You will be more comfortable if you follow the stream you found to its source," Castiel said. "Before you turned away, you felt pulled there, did you not?"

"I—was that you, pulling me?" Jack asked, frowning. "You or Sam?"

"We guided you deeper into the woods where you could find it, but it was the water itself calling to your nature that I suspect you felt," Castiel said.

"But I don’t know how to find that stream again," Jack said, looking around. There were woods on all sides of him and nothing looked remotely familiar, after his panicked run.

"Don’t worry," Sam said. "We can guide you."

"It’ll get dark soon," Jack tried one more time. "Maybe this can wait till morning?"

"Sorry, kid," Dean said. "But the sooner, the better. Darkness doesn’t matter to us, anyway." He held up one fist and a fireball rose over their heads and hovered, shining even in the afternoon light.

There were more arguments he could have made, but they all sounded hopelessly child-like, even inside his head. He was eighteen now. Jack set off, back the way he’d come running. Deeper into the woods. Dean, Sam and Castiel followed, staying visible this time, and Jack tried not to feel like he was under marching orders.

They found the stream easily enough, and there his companions really did dissolve back into the landscape. "Guys?" Jack called nervously. "Um, spirits? Elementals?"

The wind ruffled his hair in a way he thought he recognized. "We’ll meet you at the source," Cas’ voice whispered, and then Jack was alone.

The water babbled and chuckled the way any water would, mindless and endless. Jack drifted closer to it, stared at the flickering, curving reflections. It didn’t act like it was waiting for him or anything, not like the wind and the forest had this morning for him, but without quite realizing it he dipped his fingers in. The water felt amazing on his skin, like it was bringing him alive in a way he hadn’t known was possible. He wanted more of it; he stepped in and curled his toes on the soft, sandy bottom, enjoying the caress of the water on his bare skin…

Holy fucking shit, where had his shoes gone? Almost as soon as he thought it, they were back on his feet, sopping wet now. He leaped out of the water, back to the non-freaky safety of solid ground, and stared. He hadn’t imagined that. His shoes had been _gone_, socks too. Just like...just like Cas and his stupid trenchcoat.

He tried to wish a cool leather jacket into existence, but nothing happened. Huh. He slowly stepped back into the water, and this time, maybe because he was concentrating, his shoes stayed with him.

Okay. He tried once more for the leather jacket, but nothing. Maybe something smaller? He tried imagining a scarf, and then a string bracelet. But even though he felt like it _should_ be possible, he couldn’t make anything appear out of thin air.

But when he imagined his pants several inches shorter, suddenly they were. No new hem, no ragged edges...they just sort of disappeared into nothingness. Freaky. Okay. Maybe nudity was easier than clothing. Was _he_ going to be wandering around the forest naked before too long, thinking nothing of it?

The water still felt good on his skin. No telling how long it would take him to get to the start of the stream, and the sun wasn’t far from the horizon anymore. He started wading upstream, letting his sodden shoes and socks disappear again with relief. There were rocks, but they weren’t sharp or slippery, and his feet didn’t hurt.

The water was unbelievably clear. He could see each grain of sand on the bottom, and as he watched, it started to feel like the water was also somehow _empty_...not that the occasional leaf didn’t swirl by, but it didn’t have _personality_ to it, not like the wind or the green growing things of the forest did. Like there, where it riffled around that stick, it seemed like it was just waiting for someone to come along and add a little personality to the swirl…

It was dark by the time Jack climbed out of the creekbed, beneath the rock bluff it disappeared into. He was fully naked, dripping head to toe, and his head felt strange, but that was the least of it. He’d gotten down and _swum_ in a stream of water too shallow to cover him completely, toward the end, and he’d still gone faster than he could have running. Kicking had had nothing to do with it. It was like letting the water sweep him along, despite the fact that the water was going the opposite direction. He should have bruised, too, from rocks and obstacles in the streambed, but he’d flowed over them without quite seeming to have a solid enough form to impact.

His skin was glowing, very faintly, in the dark. Blue. Jack stared at his arm, trying to figure out if he could make it go back to normal, maybe the same way he could call his clothes back from whatever other dimension they’d fallen into.

He _saw_ Castiel and the others fade into existence this time, like he knew right where to look before his eyes told him anything.

"Hello, Jack," Castiel said formally, swirling from translucence to solidity as Jack watched. "We are pleased to welcome you."

"Welcome to the crazyhouse, kid," Dean grinned, tossing a fireball above his head which hung there, spinning, lighting up the clearing, the water which pooled and disappeared into the rocks, the trees around them, everything. There were four person-sized rocks all in a row sticking out of the ground. Dean was sitting on one of them.

"Did you have fun figuring it out?" Sam asked, smiling, light rippling through the seed-like patterns that decorated his chest and ran down his legs.

Jack didn’t feel like he had _anything_ figured out, but the water lapped at his heels—had it moved its bed to be nearer to him when he wasn’t looking?—and he couldn’t help smiling as he remembered the wild rush of careening through the dusk in the creekbed, flowing as easily as the water did. He took a breath, enjoying the clean forest air. "What happens now?" he asked. "You guys said something about a ritual?"

Cas drifted nearer, close enough to touch. His feet never seemed to rest on the ground, Jack noticed, trying not to stare at his naked body. The trenchcoat hadn’t reappeared when the rest of him did. Jack thought he was expecting it, but he still flinched when Cas reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. 

"Hey, easy," Dean said. "Cas, back off a sec. Jack, we’re not going to hurt you, okay?"

Jack felt ridiculous for flinching. He _knew_ they weren’t going to hurt him, somewhere deep down, the same way he’d known how to flow with the water. He would trust them at his back without thinking. But what was really bothering him—"Will I still be _me?_ After this, am I going to still recognize myself?"

Sam walked up to him—walked, normally, feet leaving impressions in the grass and everything—and when he held out his arms, Jack threw himself into them, hugging. Sam seemed so wonderfully _solid,_ and right now he needed that. 

"Hey, yeah. It’s okay," Sam soothed. "Remember, Dean and I went through this, too, not that long ago. Would it help to hear about what it was like for us?"

"Yeah…" Everything had changed so fast, and Jack was tired of feeling like a lonely bit of flotsam being swept downriver. Dammit, he wasn’t going to start _crying._ He wasn’t a kid. He pulled away from Sam and, in the absence of anywhere better, sat on one of the rocks. "If you guys aren’t in too much of a hurry, I mean, yeah, that would be really cool to hear."

"Of course," Castiel nodded. "As long as no one is attacking us, there is no urgency."

Jack pointed at him. "See, that’s exactly the kind of information I should know! Who would want to attack you? And why? And would it even work?"

Dean sighed. "Not ordinary humans, that’s for sure. We’d just disappear and they’d be left looking around like fools. But humans with magic—that’s a different story."

"Some humans have magic?" Jack interrupted. "Could _I_...wait, sorry, you guys _are_ magic, I don’t know why I’m surprised by anything anymore…"

"Some—luckily only a very few—humans are born with magic," Sam confirmed. "But they tend to live a long time, unless killed, and they—we—tend to be hard to kill. With all four of us in full control of our powers, we become...complementary to each other, you might say; much stronger than any of us alone." 

"Unless one of us does something stupid, even the strongest wizard couldn’t attack us on our own ground," Dean agreed. "And yeah, before you ask—I was the stupid one. Or my past self, Mary, was."

"Your past self was a chick?" Jack didn’t know why that shocked him, but he’d been picturing, somehow, a carbon copy of Dean.

"Yeah, and more than capable of kicking your ass, junior," Dean flared half-heartedly. "She—I—Okay, look, you never get used to the memory thing. She was a different person from me, from _this_ me, Dean, but I remember everything she remembered like I lived it, you know? And farther back than just her, too, all the way back to the beginning. Comprende?"

"I—like transferring all the stuff from your old phone or computer to your new one?" Jack asked. 

Sam snorted a laugh. "Yeah, sure, we’ll go with that one. Makes as much sense as anything."

_"Anyway."_ Dean glared to see if anyone was going to interrupt him again. "Mary was getting sick of being an elemental spirit, and she wanted to be more human. Maybe even pop out a baby or two. She and John were in love." Dean made a weird face, glancing at Sam. "But elementals like us don't have kids, as a rule. So she looked up this mage, Lucifer, who was getting a reputation as someone who could do some things, and asked him if it was possible...to take her power away temporarily."

Castiel was too stonefaced for Jack to read. Sam was frowning. 

"Turned out he could," Dean said, "And he was happy to use it himself, and not keen on letting go once he had it. He figured he’d rather take all of our powers if he could than let us insist on getting Mary’s back."

Jack shuddered. "Sounds terrible. What happened?"

"We fought," Castiel said simply. "And when we could not wrest Mary’s power away from Lucifer any other way, she chose to die so that it could be passed on in full to her successor. John tried to ease her last moments. But while he was distraught over Mary, Lucifer managed to kill him before losing his hold on her stolen power." 

Sam's face was grooved in lines of pain, remembering. 

"While Mary and John were dead, and before Dean and I came into power when we were eighteen, our powers of fire and earth couldn't be used by anyone," Sam explained. "Castiel and Crowley had to flee, and go into hiding."

"It was not a pleasant time," Cas said. "Lucifer hoped by pursuing us, he could capture power to replace what he had lost with Mary’s death. But we were not completely without allies, and we held him at bay until it was time for Dean to come into his own."

"I reacted a lot worse than you did, Jack," Dean said, "To all this coming at me cold. Freaked out, stuffed Sammy in the car, and started driving as fast and as far as I could. By the time Crowley and Cas whipped up a pocket thunderstorm to force me to stop, Sam was nearly as freaked as I was…"

"I couldn’t hear most of what they were saying to you. Of course I was worried; you were talking to voices only you could hear…" Sam put in.

Cas just looked very, very tired. "It was bad enough chasing down fledgling magic-users when all they had was horseback. These automobiles are a danger to everyone. And we were in no mood to wait another eighteen years if you stupidly got yourself and your brother killed again."

"I wouldn’t have," Dean muttered, but quietly. "And you’ll note, Jack, we avoided that with you."

Jack couldn’t help a little smile at what sounded like well-worn bickering. Yeah, only a short while ago they’d been chasing him through the woods...but at least the worst that would have happened to him was a twisted ankle or getting scratched up from the brush. "Okay. So then what? You and Sam both went through this ritual?"

"Dean did. I had to wait," Sam said. "And believe me, that sucked. But it was four years before I turned eighteen, and it doesn’t work right before that. So Dean just disappeared, as far as our parents and everyone else were concerned, and meanwhile I had to pretend I wasn’t sneaking out to see him anywhere a campfire would go unnoticed. I burned a lot of candles, too, but those were only good for a few whispers."

"But we were not careful enough," Cas said heavily. "Lucifer found us before we could fully induct Sam, and laid a trap. Crowley was forced to sacrifice himself in the ensuing struggle to free Sam and keep his power safe from Lucifer’s grasp, and therefore, Jack, you were born to inherit his power."

"Wait, what does that mean?" Jack frowned. "Are you saying my mom wouldn’t have had any kid at all if this Crowley person hadn’t died?" Jack was generally glad he was alive, but...what if his mother would still be alive if not for…?

"The magic that ensures our reincarnation is nearly as old as we are," Cas said. "For an elemental power to seek out a host, it overwrites who that person would have been nearly completely. Because of this, only a fetus which would not otherwise survive is considered an acceptable host."

Jack felt cold. "Then my mother _would_ have lived, without me…"

"We can’t know for sure," Sam said gently. "She might have died as a result of her pregnancy, no matter what. What we do know is what kept her alive so long."

"I don’t understand…" Jack’s breath wasn’t coming like it should.

"Water is healing magic, among other things," Dean said. "You couldn’t consciously control it before you were old enough, but it was with you the whole time you were growing up, and...it involved itself in things you were focused on."

"Then _why is she dead,"_ Jack burst out in a sudden snarl.

"Even the best healing can only delay the inevitable," Sam said, plucking a flower from the ground beside him and holding it out to Jack. 

Jack took it automatically. In his hand, it bloomed ferociously, going from barely open to full, colors brightening, scent expanding. But after a moment, it folded in on itself, dimming and starting to wither. He let it fall. "No," he said. "You tell me all this, and you want me to believe it was a coincidence…" he stopped to try to catch his breath, wondering if he could even say the words, "A coincidence that she died the day I turned eighteen?"

"It’d be easier, maybe, if you could believe that, kid," Dean said, and oh, it was a bad sign when _Dean,_ of them all, sounded gentle.

Jack stared stubbornly back at him, waiting. 

"I did try to talk to you before, you know," Castiel said. "You should have been able to hear—not perfectly, but _something._ Especially in the last year, after you moved so close, and you were almost grown."

"Dean could hear some, before his birthday," Sam said. "I could see and hear a lot, but then, once I knew, I was kind of obsessed with keeping in contact." He offered a slightly embarrassed grin. 

"That you didn’t hear Cas at all means that your full power was focused on something else," Dean said. "It seems pretty safe to guess—that ‘something’ was keeping your mom alive."

Jack knew without asking that it was true, the way he’d felt his power well up within him when he stepped foot in the stream earlier today. There was a swell of power he could feel, now, and it hadn’t just been out of reach before—it had been _depleted,_ constantly, for as long as he could remember. 

The stream shifted its course so that he was sitting in the middle of it, abruptly, water flowing gently uphill so it could surround him like the arms of a friend curving around him. A few tears fell from Jack’s chin, but the truth was his mom had been so ill, for so long. He’d half-expected her death as long as he could remember, and...it had happened. That was all. So magic existed, okay—but plainly magic couldn’t fix everything, or this conversation wouldn’t be happening. 

He closed his eyes to better feel the water around him, remembering how he’d let his body flow with it, how natural it had felt. "Okay," he said. "So if I’m ready, what happens next? For this ritual?"

"Give me your hand," Cas said, reaching out with both of his own. Jack put his hand out and let him take it. The air spirit’s hands felt as solid and warm as real flesh, though they were unnaturally smooth and still somewhat translucent. "Think about the things we’ve told you," Cas said, the deep rasp of his voice oddly soothing. "Try to remember."

Jack closed his eyes even as he felt Cas’ fingertips start to dig into the back of his hand with a bright bursting sensation, akin to pain, but he was coming to recognize it as the feel of magic. _Remember._ Remember what? This Crowley person that they talked about, who had been short and irritable and that they thought was somehow _him?_

"If you’d just stuck to the way things were supposed to be, everything would still be smooth sailing," he could hear a caustic, sarcastic voice—it was him saying the words—no, it was a strange ‘him’ he didn’t know—he could see the woman they were addressed to, now, long blond hair and a warm face, guilt-stricken and opening her mouth to argue—and then he saw a different memory, of that same woman with flames running over her orange skin, like Dean, laughing in the midst of a game she was playing, throwing dozens of fireballs into the air as a dark tree trunk of a man, concentrating, caught one of them in his hands and ignored the rest. But they fizzled harmlessly out of existence when they hit him, or the ground, and Jack knew as Crowley knew that all but one of those balls were illusions made of fire-magic. Cas floated over their heads, wearing the same face he did now, but of giant proportions, looking even more see-through than usual. 

Cas—now-Cas—released Jack’s hand, and Jack gasped, looking down. His hand still felt the impressions of fingers, and when he looked down, sunken stars shone underneath his skin, four little scintillations where Cas’s fingers had been. The skin around them had turned deep blue, too blue to be mistaken for mere cold or bruising. _I'm going to turn that color all over,_ Jack thought. He looked at the patterns that decorated Cas, and Dean, and Sam, all different, but similar in how they wound around legs and arms and torsos.

"You didn't tell me," Jack paused for emphasis, "That I'd be getting covered in _sparkles."_

"Some things you just gotta find out the hard way," Dean said cheerfully. "My turn." He reached out and grabbed Jack's hand, and Jack didn't resist. Warm orange fingers dug into his wrist this time, not burning him even though little wisps of flame still licked over Dean's skin where he wasn't touching Jack.

The blond woman—Mary, he knew she was Mary—fought with knife and gun as an army of men advanced into the forest. Every man she cut down vanished as if he never was—it was an army of illusions, created by Lucifer, Crowley knew suddenly, with the power he'd taken from Mary. But how to tell the real threat…? He closed his eyes and felt for the water around him, called it and it responded to him. Two bodies in all that army were real soldiers, their blades as deadly as the rest were false. Crowley opened his eyes and one of the men was right in front of him, the other attacking John on Mary's other side while Lucifer himself locked eyes with Mary, body so shielded with magic Crowley hadn't sensed him. He snarled and reached forward to grab the head of the man confronting him, dragging him downwards into a kiss. As their lips met, he _called_ once again, and the water that made up most of the man's body came when he yanked on it, leaving through the man's mouth and pouring into Crowley's, spilling over around him, as the suddenly dried-out husk of the man fell crumbling away.

Jack screamed and jerked his hand out of Dean's grasp. Too late; the miniature stars already glowed beneath his skin, and the memory was imprinted behind his eyes. "I thought you said water was a power for healing!" 

"Two sides of the same coin, kid." Dean shrugged sympathetically, and backed off. "We don’t fight often, but we needed to then."

Sam stepped forward, and Jack flinched backward. "I don’t want to learn how to kill somebody by kissing them!" The knowledge was there whether he wanted it or not; he could feel exactly what Crowley had done with his—their—magic, and he knew he’d be capable of doing it by himself, now, as permanent as the new star glittering on his wrist. 

"Now that we've begun, we may have less time than we thought," Sam said. "I have a feel for the future, Jack. My trees pay little attention to time, but they are not as bound by it as we are. And they tell me there will be an attack here, soon."

"Lucifer?" Dean asked sharply, but Sam shrugged; he didn't know.

"We must assume the worst," Cas said.

"We have to give Jack as much as we can while there's still time," Sam said, holding out his hands for Jack's expectantly. "I'm sorry, Jack."

The last thing Jack wanted to do was keep going, but what choice was there? He let Sam take his hand.

This memory was newer, because Sam and Dean were there, Sam looking barely grown, his antlers tiny nubs, but with his seed-markings everywhere on his deep green skin. Sam looked healthy, if distressed, but Crowley, whose eyes Jack was seeing through, was dying, Jack realized. His form was sloshing as he breathed, laboring to hold himself together, and then abruptly he couldn't anymore, and the water all drained out into the moss around his body, except there was no body there anymore, just a hovering glow of magic where he used to be. Dimly Jack perceived Cas and Dean beating Lucifer back while Sam dug his fingers into the moss as though he could shape Crowley back out of the water somehow.

Lucifer howled in rage, and there was a barb in it that caught at the attention of Crowley's magic. It didn't exactly think—it wasn't self-aware—but it could focus its perceptions, a little, and there was something in the furious magic-wielder's howl—Jack wasn't even certain if it was a howl audible to the ears or not—that caused it to tag along behind him, curious. After all, it could not be harmed or contained, not without a form. It could barely be detected.

And yet Lucifer detected it, or anyway he knew he had something. He tried to initiate contact—Jack could interpret, as the cloud could not, that the magician was casting a great many spells at the cloud-that-was-him, and that he was immensely frustrated at their results. After a while, he seemed to give up on them, or perhaps he noticed the way the cloud showed a particular interest in pregnant women. None were quite compelling enough to cause it to stop following Lucifer around, not yet, but…

Lucifer began pursuing women. The cloud felt no curiosity about this change in behavior, it simply observed—but Jack wished he could stop observing when he recognized one of the women in a bar that Lucifer was staring intently at. It was his mother. _No, no,_ Jack wanted to scream, he didn't want to know this, this was worse than Crowley killing someone with his magic. But he couldn't jerk himself away, either. He had to _know._ It couldn't be true, but if it was...he _needed_ to know.

The cloud of his magic watched disinterestedly as Lucifer took the woman—_Mom_—home with him, as he put a new life in her, as he cast more spells. Her life force flickered, the brand new spark sputtered…_yes,_ the magic decided. If it could be called a decision. Here was a suitable host. It attached to the infant in the woman’s womb and Jack suddenly felt the strange sensation of his own nerves beginning to fire.

His memory skipped, but he knew the magic had helped his mother escape, and suddenly he knew, too, it had been helping keep them both hidden from Lucifer. He could feel it as a part of him now, something that had been there his whole life, though he hadn’t known. And now it was active in a way it hadn’t been, ready to flow out of him and do his bidding. Since he'd turned eighteen, and it had stopped keeping his mother alive, stopped keeping them hidden...behind his eyelids he saw again Lucifer smiling terribly down at him, and this time it seemed like those eyes were looking directly at him, seeing _him,_ Jack…

"_There_ you are," a smooth voice whispered, a voice he'd only heard before as Crowley. _"Jack, my son, my darling, I'm coming for you."_

"He's coming," Jack blurted out, opening his eyes. "He knows where we are and he's coming…"

Cas grabbed his forearm and unceremoniously plunged him into another memory. This one was old, far older than any of the others. Wood-spirit, fire-spirit, water-spirit, they all had different faces and names then. Only Castiel was the same. He held up his hand and stretched it twenty feet to pluck a fruit high over his head. "Space is my area," he said. "Near or far, large or small, I can reach everywhere and speak to anyone."

The wood-spirit in a flower crown touched the fruit and it ripened. "I see all of time," she said. "I guard the past and prophesy the future."

The flaming man laughed and began to juggle twenty identical fruits. "I am energy," he said, "Light itself is mine to command, to bend as I will." The fruits all went up in the air and hung above his head, circling, and then grew into a tree canopy, hanging green and leafy above their heads while a trunk belatedly grew down in search of the ground.

Jack saw his own hand in front of his face, bluer than the sea and strangely feminine. "The flows and forms of matter are intricate enough for me," he heard his voice say, except it was a woman's voice. She gestured, and all the moisture in the air crystallized in an instant, frost limning the real fruit in Castiel's hand, outlining all their bodies and the ground itself in glittering white and fogging through the illusion of the tree. "Reality itself…"

But Cas was roughly ripped away from Jack, and he lost what she was about to say. They were out of time: Dean had grabbed Cas, and all four of them now stood, facing a disturbance in the air of the clearing where jagged-edged human magic formed the shape of a man.

"Lucifer," Sam hissed, but Jack didn't need the introduction.

"I'm here for my son," the man said as the magic around him dropped away, task accomplished.

"You have no claim to anything in this place," Castiel rumbled, darkening to the color of a thundercloud.

"Least of all him," Dean growled, sparks popping off his shoulders.

"I think that's for him to say. Wouldn't you agree, Jack?" Lucifer was smiling at him and Jack didn't know what to do. Of course he'd always dreamed of his dad finding him and his mother, wanting to talk to him. But this was a nightmare.

"You've never been part of his life and you're not going to start now," Sam snorted, lowering his antlers at the stranger--at Jack's father.

"Did you all know?" Jack asked, words dropping into the standoff like stones in a still pool. "Did you know he was my father?"

"Yes, we knew," Cas said. "We could feel when and where your magic found a body, and it did not require unusual perception to know the torture he put your mother through."

"Torture? I never," Lucifer protested. "I cared for her, truly. She was ill before we met, and I did what I could to help her, with the meager portion of magic I was left with after Mary betrayed me…"

"Lies," Dean said, flames leaping from his hair. "Your pants are more on fire than I am, you evil bastard…"

"You don't care about anything but getting and keeping more power," Sam said.

"How can I trust you?" Jack asked him. "I remember fighting you before…"

Lucifer's gaze flicked down to Jack's hand, sparkling with stars on the back and palm and around the wrist and forearm. "You think that they would show you an unbiased view?" he asked, raising a brow. "What they are doing to you is nigh irreversible, and they have rushed you into agreeing, no doubt…"

"It is because of you that we must rush," Cas said. "Because you would take his power for your own, if you can. If we let you, if we do not guard him from you..."

"And if Jack would rather live a normal life, see what the world has to offer him as a human?" Lucifer said. "I would personally be overjoyed for the chance to show him all it has in store for a young man. But no, you would never allow him that freedom, would you?"

It was true, Jack _had_ always wanted to see the world. He looked at Sam, torn.

"Jack, we cannot and would not force you to accept what we give you," Sam said. "But _he_ cannot be trusted, no matter what he says. He would see us all dead, our magic drifting forever, if he can't manage to possess it for himself."

"And why do you deserve so much magic?" Lucifer asked. "What do you do with it all? Nothing! I could do so much with just a tiny portion. I could remake the entire world if I had it all. I could create a better one!"

"You are a child," Cas informed him loftily. "You poke and tinker at what you do not understand, and if it fails to go the way you wish it to, you would smash it without a second's pause."

"We don't sit around doing nothing," Dean said, offended. "You're just too dumb to see the difference."

"All I ask is that you leave the choice open to Jack," Lucifer said, smiling too politely.

"I—" Jack started, and didn't know how to continue. They were all looking at him. He remembered the feeling of tearing all the water out of a living human body, and the ghostly impression of being fascinated with Lucifer, and felt torn. Did he know, for sure, that Crowley and his friends had been the good guys, and Lucifer the bad one? He didn't know anything, not really. "I need more time to think. I want—please, can I go home?"

"I'm sorry, Jack," Sam said. "But that would be the same as letting Lucifer win. Outside of this forest, we would not be as strong as we are here, and as soon as you go to sleep, we could not guard you from him."

"They will not be satisfied with anything, except that you remain here and accept their memories until you can't think for yourself anymore," Lucifer said softly, seeing Jack waver.

It was the middle of the night and sleeping sounded _wonderful,_ but Jack shook his head, trying to clear it.

"If you let him take your magic now, Jack, he will never let you have it back," Dean said urgently. 

"Why didn't you tell me he was my father?" Jack felt too many things all at once, and he was expected to decide what they all meant, right now, and decide something that would change the rest of his life? "Why didn't you help me save my mother? If I'd known about my magic in time...you have all these incredible abilities and you still couldn't sit down and write a letter?"

"Jack…" Sam's eyes were deep and sorrowful.

"We thought a lack of contact would be safest," Castiel said. "After what happened with Sam…"

"I'd rather have her alive and not have any magic left for myself than _this,_ Jack said bitterly. "And now you want me to give up on knowing my father, too? For what? So I can sit around in the woods forever while the world goes by?"

"You're a smart young man, Jack," said Luc—his father. "I look forward to getting to know you better. I think we're going to have a great time, you and me."

Jack pointed at him. "This doesn't mean I trust you," he said. "It means I'm willing to give you a chance."

"That's all I ask," Lucifer promised eagerly.

When Jack looked around, the clearing was empty except for the two of them, and the big moss-covered boulders. Sam, Dean, and Cas were gone.

"See? They're cowards, really," Lucifer said. "They'll never really do anything with all their magic. We're going to be different."

"What does that even mean?" Jack asked, exasperated. "What do you want the power for? What would you do with it?"

Lucifer laughed. Jack guessed it was trying to be a nice laugh. "Oh, what couldn't we do! We could solve global warming, for starters. Water is an incredible heat sink, and your power can heat or freeze things up in a jiffy, no problem. Or we could create things—like an ice palace, if you like. Did you ever see Frozen? Elsa would have nothing on you."

"The others said…" Jack hesitated, but Lucifer nodded encouragingly for him to continue. "They said my power would be good for healing."

"Of course, we can do that too," Lucifer said. "People will pay anything to be made better, won't they? Healing is incredibly valuable. With enough juice, we could even sell immortality, I imagine!"

Jack studied him. He just wanted to help people, he didn't want to get rich off them. Lucifer didn't look old: middle-aged, maybe, but he still moved easily and wasn't wrinkly or grey. Well. Maybe a few wrinkles. "How old are you?"

"Thirty-nine," Lucifer said smoothly.

"That would mean you were a toddler when Sam was born, so you couldn't have taken Mary's magic and killed her and John," Jack pointed out. "Try again."

"Ah, kid, you're sharp," Lucifer chuckled. Had Jack made him uneasy? "Thirty-nine is just what everybody says when they don't want to feel old. But you got me: I'm fifty-eight. I was around your age when Mary first came to me for help because she didn't want to spend her whole life as a magical spirit."

The math checked out this time, but something didn't sit right. He thought about the memory he had of the battle with Mary and John, where he had seen Lucifer. Crowley, whose eyes he'd seen it through, had been more focused on the enemy right in front of him than on Lucifer, so he could only recall his face dimly, but he didn't think it was the face of a teenager. It looked pretty much just like Lucifer's face now.

"How many people do you think I could make immortal?" Jack asked slowly. "Wouldn't people start fighting over it?"

"We can always worry about that later," Lucifer said, waving his hand. "For now, let's worry about getting out of these woods, right, pal? You can come over to my place, or just sleep in your own bed tonight, it's up to you. I'd love to see where you and your mother have been living."

Jack thought about it. His own bed was something he'd been wishing for since all this started, and he'd had enough adventure here for a lifetime, but…"I don't know if it'd feel right, letting you into her space," Jack said slowly. "She never tried to find you, or wanted me to."

For a moment there was an ugly flicker in Lucifer's eyes. But then he was smiling again, and Jack thought perhaps he’d just imagined the nasty look a moment ago. "I really loved her, you know," he said. "Just like I would have loved you, if I'd been allowed to."

The words fed some deep hunger in Jack's soul until he almost couldn't stand to remember that Lucifer might not be telling him the truth. "Can you tell me about her?"

Again a flicker—irritation, maybe? "She was beautiful, of course," Lucifer began. "And strong. Her laugh was the best thing ever, and she was so kind, right from the start, when she agreed to come home with me. The first time."

"How was that kind?" Jack frowned. "You said she was ill, and you were trying to heal her."

"I meant after that," Lucifer said quickly. "I told her she didn't have to give me anything, but she insisted on buying me dinner, and one thing led to another…"

"You mean you let her pay you with sex?" Jack tried to keep the disgust off his face. Giving out healing for free didn't sound at all like Lucifer, based on their conversation so far, and the description of his mom didn't sound much like the woman who'd raised him, either. She'd never been particularly beautiful, and if she had already been ill, then why describe her as strong? Plus, as much as Jack loved her, he'd be the first to say her laugh was kind of nasal. 

"It wasn't like that," Lucifer said. He was definitely irritated.

"Can you tell me what her laugh was like? I never got to hear it much," Jack said. That was a lie; she'd laughed with him plenty. But he needed to know.

"It rang like a bell," Lucifer said. "Deep and loud." He paused, perhaps sensing that Jack was not won over, and added, "It made me feel like everything was full of joy."

Jack was certain now that Lucifer was sneering on the inside, and for a moment he went blind with rage. Just like the ancient woman had, he twisted with his power and every drop of water around them crystallized into icy shards. "I don’t believe you."

Lucifer snarled, face coated in frost, like everything around them. "You’re a good-for-nothing brat, and you don’t deserve this kind of power. Your mother deserved everything she got, for taking you away from me!"

Jack could suddenly feel another touch on the ice, a different magical power. It was trying to melt it all...stubbornly, he threw more power into keeping his frost, but his magic was being absorbed as fast as he could spend it…

_Lucifer_ was absorbing his power, drinking it in, as thirsty as the now desert-dry air. "Rookie mistake, my boy," he said, grinning terribly. "Never throw good money after bad."

He was still pulling at Jack’s magic, even though Jack had stopped trying to use it. Like water droplets wanted to bead together, it didn’t like being split; it wanted to stick together. Jack scowled and pulled back as hard as he could, but Lucifer already had too much, and he was older and stronger. 

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," he sang, looking around the clearing for wherever the other three had disappeared to. "I have more than the power of illusions now. More than glimpses of the future with which to work. I can destroy all of you. Once and for all."

Slowly, as though being dragged, Sam became visible, fading into view against one of the bigger tree trunks surrounding the clearing. Dean popped into existence next to him, and finally, reluctantly, taking a long time to solidify out of a shimmer in the air, Castiel was there too. 

Sam pointed at Lucifer, and Jack could feel the wave of power he flung. The grass beneath that blast withered and died, two trees behind Lucifer cracked and rotted, and Lucifer staggered and his face grew as wrinkled as an old, old man's. But then he straightened, and drew on the power he'd stolen from Jack to heal himself, and his face went smooth and young again.

Dean drew a flaming sword out of the air, and came in spinning. Each time he spun, another Dean appeared, also with a flaming sword, also spinning and dividing into more Deans.  
Jack knew what Lucifer was going to do the instant before he did it, and he tried to reach out with his magic to heat the air up, pull the water out of it, but he was too late: Lucifer turned everything to crystal, as Jack had done moments ago, and they shimmered through the illusions, while outlining the real Dean. The illusions farthest from Lucifer paused, all at once, sheathed their swords, and began hurling fireballs at him instead. All the fireballs melted through the Ice shards, but just in time, Lucifer wrenched up a shield of his own magic. The fireballs splatted harmlessly against an icy smooth wall of magic.

Castiel suddenly loomed large above them, and several small tornados took shape, gathering up flames from Dean's workings until there were four tall firespouts boxing Lucifer in. 

But Lucifer drew the stream over underneath them, and the water was pulled up into the twisters, putting out the flames. Then the waterspouts got even bigger, and started pulling Cas down into them.

"Yes!" Lucifer cried, mad and gleeful, as he gathered up the four ends of the spouts and shaped a bubble underneath them with his magic mixed with Jack's. When the spray cleared, Jack was horrified to see a small globe of ice, and inside, a tiny Cas, scowling up at Lucifer.

"Oh look at that, you're actually heavy like this," Lucifer chortled, dropping the ice ball. It bounced hard on the ground but didn't break. At least Cas didn't look ruffled by the impact; he just kept floating in the middle of the globe.

"This is the first stage of your destruction, I hope you know," Lucifer told Sam and Dean. "Castiel is the one who could never be caught or destroyed. At least, not until tonight. After I kill you all, the cycle of reincarnation will be broken, and your magic will be free for the taking."

"I think you're forgetting one thing," Sam said, defiant.

"You kind of gave yourself away just there with the 'kill you all' talk," Dean added. Both of them looked smug as Jack laid a hand on Lucifer's shoulder from behind.

Lucifer whirled to face Jack, but it was too late: every molecule of water in his body was responding to Jack faster than thought, fountaining out into the chill, crisp air, turning to a glittering frost-fog. When the fog eventually lifted, it revealed only a dessicated body, like something long mummified.

"I'm sorry you weren't a better father," Jack said, staring down at what had very recently been a living human. "But seriously, fuck you."

"Couldn’t have said it better myself," Dean clapped him on the shoulder. "Huh. Hey, Jack, this does mean you can go home now, if you want. Before taking on any more memories."

Jack looked up and walked away from the corpse. Maybe he was channelling Crowley's attitude more now, or maybe this was just how he would have reacted anyway. He didn’t have regrets. "Actually, I think I’m pretty clear about it now," he said. "More memories would be good. Whenever it’s, you know, convenient for you guys."

Sam had gone to poke at the ice globe, Jack saw. "Is Cas okay?"

Sam gave a pleased hum and the surface of the globe all melted away, letting Cas expand to normal human size all at once. "Perfectly fine, if chagrined," Cas said, dry as ever. "Welcome back to us, Jack."

Sam walked over by Jack to stare at Lucifer's corpse. "Can I kick him?"

"You can do anything you want, all three of you," Cas said, pointing at each of them in turn for emphasis, "Except for dying again. Stop that. I mean it."

"Yeah, alright," Jack said, and grinned. "Deal."

* * *

** The End **


End file.
